LISA: THE PAINFUL RPG

LISA: The Painful RPG,or alternatively LISA: The Painful and/or just LISA, is the sequel to LISA: The First. It is the journey of Brad Armstrong, attempting to save his adopted daughter, Buddy, the last female in Olathe after being kidnapped.

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Brad is the main protagonist of the game. He's a middle aged, drug addict self-identifying man who is haunted by the memories of his deceased sister, Lisa. Fate lands him along a melancholic and violent journey through the pervert-infested post-apocalyptic land of Olathe in search of his adoptive daughter, Buddy.

Lisa was Brad's younger sister. Being unable to cope with the physical and sexual abuse of her father, she committed suicide by hanging herself. Brad is haunted by visions of her throughout the game, and adopted Buddy to cope with the guilt from Lisa's death. She was the protagonist of the previous exploration game, LISA: THE FIRST.

Buzzo is one of the major antagonists on the game. Shrouded in mystery, Buzzo appears as a rather young man full of anger and power. He seems to be directly involved with the strange drug known as "Joy."

His interaction with the player is by subjecting Brad to ultimatum decisions that put his friends lives, belongings or even his limbs at risk. His motives are unknown. Other than that, he's a Joyful Boy.

Rando is another mysterious and powerful man in the land of Olathe. Covering his face with a Red Skull Mask and his body with a large ominous black tunic, the leader of the Rando Army unnerves his enemies and subordinates with his sole prescence. Yet still, he doesn't seem what he looks like, as he is oddly sensitive and calm.

The events of LISA: The Painful RPG are set in the aforementioned land of Olathe, a post-Apocalyptic area inhabited by human males on the most part.

The game starts in the past by showing us Brad and his friends as children being beaten up by Chris Columbo and his gang because Rick, Sticky or Cheeks took Chris' ball. Brad assumes the responsibility on this and he takes the rest of the beating on himself.

After Chris and his gang leave, Brad goes back home. His place looks more untidy and directly contrasts the rest of the homes in the Nice Neighborhood.

Rick, Sticky and Cheeks were all at one point recruitable party members, and Rick and Sticky still have unused battle sprites and animations in the game code.

Early gameplay trailers hinted at a completely different main plot, with Buddy asking Brad and the uncles about a mission of revenge.

Columbo has enemy battle data in the final game code and an unused battle theme in the soundtrack, but isn't fought in the game proper.

An early teaser image◊ shows sprites for multiple party members and characters, a few of which go unused.

A gameplay feature that ended up being cut for time was specific side quests for different party members, in the end Bo was the only one who ended up with his own side quest, searching for his lost brother.

A minor change, but an early teaser shot◊ of the Salvation Rangers implied that Dick was actually yellow.

There were initially supposed to be ten Kickstarter backer characters, but four of them fell through for one reason or another, and the game only ended up with six (Beastborn, Garth, RT, Yazan, Jack and Sonny).

The game was initially titled "The Last Matador", and interviews with Austin Jorgensen imply that it was not originally connected with Lisa: The First until well into development.

In fact, Austin's original concept for this game was a Fist of the North Star type setting in which a bunch of ripped dudes beat eachother up, then he started to get into the deeper aspects of a world without any women.

The pre-alpha gameplay footage shows a lot of things that didn't make it into the game. Aside from the aforementioned Ricky and Cheeks as party members, the trailer also shows them having a team attack that implies that moves can be done with certain party members in the same party, a party member named Hawk that is nowhere to be found in the final game, a sneaking mechanic, proper battle backgrounds instead of the in-engine generated ones, and more blatant foreshadowing of Dr. Yado.

Austin Jorgensen had mentioned in interviews that he originally wanted to put several reference characters in LISA (mentioning the USA Sports Team from The King of Fighters specifically), and sprites for quite a few of them do exist in the spritesheet, but in the end none made the cut save for Expies of Lucas, the Mario Bros. and a palette-swapped Everdred.

Austin also stated that Rando was originally going to be a biological son of Brad's and that Hawk was going to compete with Brad to gain Rando's trust, and eventually control the Rando Army. This subplot was scrapped but a Dummied Out sprite references it.